NANTUCKET, the resort island in Massachusetts, may be about 600 miles from Washington DC, but its Atlantic breezes are blowing through the halls of Congress. An outfit called Cape Wind wants to put 130 wind turbines in deep water beyond Nantucket and another resort island, Martha鈥檚 Vineyard, also off Cape Cod. They鈥檒l be pretty far out and green energy advocates say they won鈥檛 be an eyesore.
Sceptics, many of whom own some of the country鈥檚 most exclusive vacation real estate, aren鈥檛 convinced. They don鈥檛 want wind farms ruining their view.
They have powerful allies. Among these is Senator John Warner of Virginia who, according to local papers, often visits Cape Cod. Warner, a Republican conservative, recently introduced clauses into a defence bill in Congress to halt the project. Among his allies was liberal icon Senator Ted Kennedy. Generally thought to be an ally of the greens, Kennedy and many of his relatives own lots of Cap Cod vacation property.
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Just days before a vote on the bill, Warner removed the stuff about the wind project. Congressional sources cited objections from other Republicans.
But there鈥檚 still some more hill to climb on this. The builders await an environmental impact statement (EIS) by the Army Corps of Engineers, which has jurisdiction over building in coastal waters. The EIS was completed in September, but has been sitting on a Pentagon desk, being reviewed since then.
Wind-farm backers worry that if enough powerful vacationers on Capitol Hill complain, the review process may grind to a halt out of sight, and with less pressure on powerful senators to explain why they couldn鈥檛 support alternative energy.
LIKE any good politician, President Bush likes to have it both ways. On the one hand, he says he is greatly concerned about human life, and therefore doesn鈥檛 want his government to encourage the destruction of human embryos to obtain stem cells. At the same time, he points out that he was the first US president to allow federal funds to be used for embryonic stem cell research.
A contradiction? Oh no. Federal funds can only be used for embryonic stem cells lines created prior to 9 August 2001, created from embryos for which 鈥渢he life-and-death decision has already been made,鈥� as the president put it.
Announcing this policy in 2001, he also promised to 鈥渘ame a president鈥檚 council to monitor stem cell research, to recommend appropriate guidelines and regulations, and to consider all of the medical and ethical ramifications of biomedical innovation鈥�. He named the members of his council, but it has so far declined to tackle the potentially thorny problem of appropriate guidelines for such research.
So now the scientific community has decided to do the job itself. The National Academies appointed a panel to consider when and under what circumstances it is appropriate to use embryonic stem cells in research. Aware that many critics of this research will see this as a case of the fox volunteering to guard the henhouse, the National Academies have not included any US stem cell researchers on the panel, as a way of demonstrating their good faith. That may be too subtle a distinction for many.
Another problem facing the panel is that this research has been going on for years, and it is not clear that scientists will take kindly to this post-hoc investigation of their work. And, since no one actually asked the National Academies for their opinion on the subject, it鈥檚 not certain anyone will listen once it is offered.
